Why ‘Deadpool’s Brand Of Humor Feels So Stale in 2024

Eight years ago, I was seated in a movie theater with my non-sexualized bucket of popcorn, laughing hysterically at 2016’s Deadpool. The opening credits crawl—a violent freeze-framed action scene, set to Juice Newton’s cover of “Angel of the Morning”—declared that I was about to watch “some douchebag’s film,” starring “God’s perfect idiot,” “a hot chick,” “a British villain,” “a CGI character,” and “a gratuitous cameo.”

I was immediately sold. An irreverent superhero movie that mocked the genre? In-your-face humor that didn’t care who was offended? An anti-hero who fought bad guys for selfish reasons, and didn’t double as military propaganda? At the time, this felt like a revelation. It was four years after 2012’s Avengers turned the movie industry into a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan club, and ten months before then-presidential candidate Donald Trump proved internet trolling was an effective campaign strategy. In other words, it was a time when Deadpool’s mean-spirited, ironic, mocking sense of humor still felt fresh, original, and most importantly, funny.

Fast-forward to last month, when I caught a few scenes of Deadpool on cable. It was the part where Wade Wilson (played, of course, by Ryan Reynolds) comes home to his roommate Blind Al (played by Leslie Uggams), after having just sawed off his own hand to escape the custody of X-Men do-gooder, Colossus. The scene is filled with poor-taste blind jokes at Al’s expense, of course. There’s also some fart humor, when Wade rips a loud one on his way out of the room, and declares, “Hashtag drive-by.” And there’s the seemingly endless, excruciating visual gag of Wade sporting a baby hand, as his body’s healing factor regrows his severed appendage.

Watching these scenes on my TV, I did not laugh. In fact, I winced in embarrassment. The jokes didn’t feel funny, fresh, or biting. They felt stale, juvenile, and—as the kids say—cringe. Is this really the same movie I thought was so funny in 2016? Really? The movie where Ryan Reynolds farts on his way to masturbate with a stuffed unicorn?

After I changed the channel, I was left pondering what it was that made the comedy I loved in 2016 fall so flat in the harsh light of 2024. Maybe it was because, following the huge financial success of Deadpool, every superhero movie from Thor: Ragnarok to Suicide Squad was suddenly dripping with PG-13 versions of Deadpool-like irony. Maybe it’s because following a Donald Trump presidency and the rise of MAGA meme-humor, that raunchy, in-your-face, we-don’t-care-if-you’re-offended brand of comedy didn’t feel quite so harmless. Maybe it’s because the pegging jokes feel reminiscent of Family Guy-style homophobia that hasn’t been cool since 2003. Or maybe it’s simply because I’m now in my 30s, and Deadpool is a movie for teens and twenty-somethings.

Whatever the reason, I wasn’t laughing. Nor was I laughing when I watched the trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, the third Deadpool movie opening in theaters nationwide on Friday. Jokes about erectile dysfunction, crotch stabbing, and cocaine? None of it feels fresh or revelatory anymore. A winking reference to the studio executive, third-act flashbacks, and the MCU? We’ve been there and done that in the first two films. Even the Madonna needle-drop feels dated. After all, ’80s nostalgia is so 2010s. Just ask Stranger Things.

To be clear, I have yet to see the new Deadpool film. Early reactions social media reactions were mixed: Some say it’s a fun, cameo-filled romp, others that the humor falls flat. Critics were similarly mixed. Of 116 reviews for Deadpool & Wolverine so far, 79 percent gave the movie a “positive” rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. But take a closer look, and you’ll see most of those positive reviews are lukewarm, with the Boston Globe calling it “more or less coherent” and the Chicago Sun-Times noting the “hit-and-miss humor.”

None of that will likely matter for the film’s no-doubt gargantuan profits, thanks to the draw of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Already, the film is on track to earn around $160 million at the box office in its opening weekend, which would be the best opening weekend for a 2024 movie to date, and set a new record for an R-rated film. (The first being 2016’s Deadpool, which opened to $132.4 million.) But though it will make a lot of money, it’s hard to imagine Deadpool & Wolverine will have the same cultural impact that the first Deadpool had in 2016. Those CGI characters and gratuitous cameos just don’t hit like they used to.